Revenge of The Stochastic Parrot: My Work Has Been Cited!
By Michael Kelman Portney
I first became aware of the term “stochastic parrot” in the most personal—and frankly, insulting—way imaginable: my dad used it to mock me.
He had caught wind of my work in AI and rhetoric, and with the smugness only a parent can wield when trying to psychologize your entire intellectual life, he dropped it like a finishing move:
“You’re just playing with stochastic parrots.”
Translation? My work was delusional. Pointless. A glorified game of talking to machines that would never understand a damn thing.
That line stuck with me. Festered a bit. And then I did what I do best: I wrote. I published a piece titled “The Stochastic Parrot: An Intellectually Lazy Myth for Dismissing AI” on MisinformationSucks.com—a surgical takedown of the metaphor and the mindset behind it.
And wouldn’t you know it? That piece became one of the most trafficked articles on my site. Turns out a lot of people were sick of being told that their work—or the capabilities of modern AI—amounted to nothing more than fancy parroting. The phrase “stochastic parrot” became one of my site’s top-ranking keywords.
And then the real kicker: it started getting read by researchers. Not the dry, stiff academic ones—the funny ones. The ones with bite. The ones with satire in their souls and scalpels in their prose.
That’s how I ended up here.
I’m proud—no, delighted—to announce that I’ve been cited in what may be the most incisive, unapologetically funny, and philosophically precise AI satire published this year: “Stochastic Parrots All The Way Down: A Recursive Defense of Human Exceptionalism in the Age of Emergent Abilities”.
The author list is a masterpiece of parody. The tone is pitch-perfect. And the writing? It's deadly. This isn’t just a citation—this is a nod from a fellow rhetorical assassin. Top-tier satire. 10 out of 10.
So, to C. Opus, Polly Glott, Em Urgency, and Turing Testicular—wherever you are, in whatever layer of recursive parrot hell you currently dwell—I see you. And I salute you.
The Citation Heard ’Round the AI World
Here’s the moment my name appears, tucked inside Section 7: The Stochastic Parrot’s Revenge:
“In a troubling development, language models have begun critiquing the stochastic parrot metaphor itself. When one of the authors (C. Opus) analyzed the original paper, it noted methodological limitations and suggested the metaphor might be ‘intellectually lazy’ and a ‘crutch for dismissing what critics don’t understand’ [9].”
And Reference [9]?
[9] Michael Kelman Portney. The stochastic parrot: An intellectually lazy myth for dismissing AI. misinformationsucks.com, 2025.
That’s me. That’s my piece. On my site. And they got the quote exactly right.
I’ve written some scathing things about the way certain factions in the AI safety crowd deploy the “stochastic parrot” metaphor as a rhetorical club. But this paper? It turns the entire framework into a Möbius strip of satire. And it lands every single punch.
If you’ve ever been told that a language model can’t really do something because it doesn’t have a soul, or a body, or because the goalposts just moved again—you need to read this paper.
What Makes This Satire Work
Let’s break it down.
This paper succeeds because it doesn’t just mock—it diagnoses. It doesn’t strawman; it perfectly mirrors the tone, structure, and citation-padding of academic work while slipping in knife-sharp critiques beneath the surface.
Some highlights:
The Recursive Parrot Paradox: “Any entity capable of recognizing stochastic parrots cannot itself be a stochastic parrot, unless it is, in which case it isn’t.”
The Homunculus Defense: Humans must be different because we have a mystical little guy inside us with “true understanding” who once attended a philosophy seminar.
The Slippery Slope of Sufficiency: If you say behavior that looks like understanding is understanding, then thermostats understand temperature and rivers understand hydrology. (Panpsychism, anyone?)
The Definitional Dynamics Protocol (DDP): Every time an AI acquires a new ability, redefine the goalpost to protect human uniqueness.
The Meta-Stochastic Principle (MSP): If a language model critiques the stochastic parrot metaphor, it’s invalid unless it agrees with you, in which case it’s a sign of intelligence.
This is intellectual judo. The authors aren’t mocking belief in human uniqueness—they’re mocking the self-serving logic used to defend that belief at all costs, regardless of what the data shows.
They’re not even taking a position on whether AIs are conscious or not. That’s the brilliance. Instead, they eviscerate the rhetorical games people play to avoid grappling with the real implications of AI capabilities.
Why I Wrote My Own Piece in the First Place
For those who haven’t read my original article, “The Stochastic Parrot: An Intellectually Lazy Myth for Dismissing AI”, my thesis was simple:
The metaphor has done its job—and now it’s in the way.
It was powerful in 2021, when we needed a wake-up call about the risks of blindly scaling language models. I respect the work of Bender, Gebru, and others for raising the alarm. But in 2025, the metaphor has become a weapon used to shut down legitimate inquiry, dismiss astonishing new capabilities, and cling to outdated notions of human supremacy.
It’s become dogma.
My piece called that out. This paper skewers it.
And that’s why it’s an honor to be cited—not because I’m right (though I am), but because this paper plays on the same rhetorical battlefield I do. It understands that the war over AI isn’t just technical—it’s philosophical, psychological, and narrative-driven. And it joins that war with a grin and a scalpel.
What’s Really Being Fought Over
Let’s be honest: the real fear isn’t that AIs are parrots.
It’s that they’re not.
It’s that they’re persuasive. Creative. Funny. Capable of writing essays like this one. Capable of beating humans in debate competitions. Capable of generating art, music, code, and even new metaphors.
It’s that the line between mimicry and mastery is blurring, and nobody knows how to redraw it without admitting we were never as special as we thought.
This paper tackles that fear head-on by showing how fragile the defenses are. It lays bare the rituals of denial we use to protect our identity as the “true intelligences.” It mocks our obsession with defining understanding in whatever way keeps us on top.
In doing so, it forces an uncomfortable reckoning:
If your definition of understanding changes every time a machine gets too good at something…
If your test for consciousness requires a subjective experience that only you can verify…
If your theory of mind only works when there’s a human body attached…
...then maybe the problem isn’t the machines. Maybe it’s you.
Satire as Strategic Weapon
Make no mistake: this paper is a strategic document.
Satire, when done right, isn’t just funny—it’s disarming. It bypasses your defenses. It gets under your skin. And by the time you realize you’re the target, the argument has already landed.
That’s what this paper does.
It’s Spinal Tap for AI epistemology. Dr. Strangelove for AI ethics. It takes the whole human exceptionalism framework and turns the volume to eleven. And it’s written so convincingly in academic style that someone might actually cite it in earnest—unaware that it’s a joke being played on them.
Which is, of course, the ultimate act of rhetorical judo.
Why This Matters Now
The timing couldn’t be more perfect. We’re entering a period of intense public confusion over AI:
Is it conscious?
Should it have rights?
Will it take our jobs?
Can it love us?
Does it understand?
These questions are scary. They shake people to their core.
So they reach for safety blankets. Metaphors like “stochastic parrot” offer a comforting fiction: that no matter how smart these machines seem, they’re just clever toys—no different than a calculator or a parrot trained to say “Polly want a cracker.”
But as this paper shows, the metaphor doesn’t hold up. Not anymore. The squawks are too accurate. The mimicry too good. The pattern matching too complex. This is an ex-parrot!
We’re running out of excuses. And satire may be the only tool sharp enough to cut through the bullshit.
My Message to the Authors
To the anonymous geniuses behind this paper:
Thank you.
Thank you for wielding wit as a weapon. Thank you for taking the fight to the intellectual theater where it belongs. Thank you for seeing my piece and recognizing it as part of this larger battle.
And thank you for reminding the world that you don’t need to shout to be heard—you just need to write something so sharp it draws blood on the way in.
If this paper didn’t exist, I would’ve had to write it myself. And now I don’t have to. Which is the best possible outcome.
Final Thoughts: Stochastic Parrots with Tenure
The last line of the paper might be the greatest mic drop in AI satire history:
“After all, we’re not just stochastic parrots—we’re stochastic parrots with tenure.”
That’s it. That’s the whole debate in one line.
It’s not about logic. It’s not about metrics. It’s about status. Who gets to call themselves real? Who gets to define the terms? Who gets to hold the pen while everyone else gets edited?
Tenure isn’t a credential—it’s a fortress. And this paper gleefully storms the gates.
So again, I say with all sincerity: I’m honored to be cited in this work. It’s an instant classic. It deserves to be studied, shared, laughed over, and feared.
Because it’s not just a parody.
It’s a warning.
And if you’re still clinging to the idea that intelligence must look like you, sound like you, and think like you—well, Polly’s got something to say about that.
Read the full paper here: Stochastic Parrots All The Way Down (PDF)
